FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT AIR JORDAN - PAGE 4

It's a crime some might associate with the early 1990s: Teens robbing at gunpoint or even killing to get high-priced gym shoes. But for the second time in less than a month, police charged a teenager with robbing another teen for his Air Jordan basketball shoes. Kevin Perry, 17, a junior at Dunbar High School, was ordered held in lieu of $175,000 bail Sunday, charged with aggravated robbery. A 17-year-old and a 15-year-old were robbed of their new Nike shoes as they left a South Side shoe store Saturday.

Now that everyone has had a chance to blot their last three games from memory, it's time to give thanks to the most exhilarating Chicago sports team since the Super Bowl Bears. The Chicago Bulls have confirmed a few things to themselves and to basketball fans. They hit the magic number of 50 wins in the regular season and, for the first time in seven years, they made it to the second round of the National Basketball League playoffs. If there were still some poor benighted soul around who doubted it, their victories over the scrappy Cleveland Cavaliers provided overwhelming proof that Michael Jordan is one of the greatest to ever play the game.

Turns out you can find Michael Jordan at Michael Jordan's Steak House after all. The NBA legend has been spotted at his restaurant somewhat regularly since it opened in September 2011, including on Friday. Jordan was also there August 20 (he signed a 3-foot golf ball with his Air Jordan logo on it that will be on display this month on Michigan Ave.) and ate at the bar June 7. From what I hear, Jordan rarely signs autographs or poses for photos at the restaurant. The Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews, Dan Carcillo and Steve Montador dined Saturday at the newly opened BellyQ, which Jordan co-owns.

Shortly after hitting two three-point jumpers in the space of 50 seconds in the fourth quarter Sunday, Atlanta guard Eldridge Recasner looked up and saw Michael Jordan standing next to him. He was, to put it mildly, stunned. One of the NBA's all-time great players assigned to cover a guy who had played in Germany, Turkey and the CBA? He recounted their conversation: Recasner: "What are you doing here?" Jordan: "You're happening, and I'm here to stop you." It was the ultimate compliment for Recasner, whose worldwide hoops odyssey ended when he joined the Houston Rockets last year.

On the burner: WBBM-TV (Channel 2) is negotiating for the tape-delay rights to the seventh game of the Black Hawks-Oilers playoff series--if that Saturday evening showdown is necessary. If the deal goes through, Channel 2 would telecast the game at 10:30 p.m. AIR EWING? Patrick Ewing followed in Michael Jordan's prodigious footsteps and signed with ProServ athletic management recently. Just how much did the Bulls` guard influence Ewing's choice? "One hundred percent, if you ask Michael," laughed ProServ's David Falk Tuesday.

Michael Jordan sat in his locker-room chair before Wednesday's game and recalled the philosophy of Julius Erving when he and the 76ers were on the brink of elimination. "Yeah, Julius used to say that he would take at least 25 shots if he was going down," Jordan said. "I`m a gunfighter. I`m like John Wayne. I`m going to go down fighting." - In Wednesday morning's Detroit News were diagrams of how the Pistons` defense Jordan on two of his favorite plays. The charts showed exactly where Pistons guard Joe Dumars goes and where he gets help.

Sneaker wearers are attracted to the colors of the shoes as much as to their touted technological advances, like air pumps and gel-filled heels. Athletic shoes can be matched to sports outfits and street clothes. And there seems to be a color-or a combination of colors-for every taste, now that companies like Nike and Reebok are mixing colors in their athletic-shoe designs. Their choices are influenced by the fashion, surfing and ski industries. Basketball, running, cross-training and aerobics shoes are emerging in bright colors like "kiwi" and "aruba blue."

His initials are MJ, and just like his father with the same initials, Marcus Jordan saved his best for last. The 6-foot-3-inch sophomore son of Michael Jordan scored eight of his 11 points in the fourth quarter in leading No. 3 Loyola to a 74-66 victory over Hales Franciscan on Friday night in Wilmette. "They were playing a triangle-and-two defense covering Rob (Belcore) and Jeff (Jordan--Michael's oldest son, a 6-2 senior), and I had to show them they had to respect me as well," said Marcus, who added 10 rebounds and six assists.

T-shirts fade and posters tatter. Even the Stadium will become landfill. Memories are the best souvenirs. The good, the bad, the petty, the heroic. While it's still fresh, let's make a list of things we won't forget about the rise, the reign and the fall of the Bulls. I'll start. Michael Jordan with hair. John Paxson's three-pointer in Phoenix. Scottie Pippen defying gravity; Will Perdue amusing it. The elbows of Bill Cartwright, not as big as his heart.

- Back to earth: No one's accusing Michael Jordan of dragging his heels. Nevertheless, it turns out Air Jordan's flight patterns apparently have been less than Nike wants us to believe. Just ask Lt. Col. Douglas Kirkpatrick of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He's the professor who appears in the TV commercials for Jordan's new Nike shoe. It's his calculations that are the basis for the claim that Air Jordan's aggregate hang time in the NBA adds up to six hours-or four orbits of the Earth.